Gresham duo seeking Kardashian-level fame through 'Lawn Wars'

View full sizeCourtesy of Denise MartinThis shot of Denise Martin's "Lawn Wars" application video shows the labyrinth design cut into her yard. Martin hopes to find a redneck lawn to pitch to producers to attract them to the Portland metro area.

Denise Martin says she's hunting for fame, and she needs a redneck lawn to achieve it.

Martin's lawn at 3640 W. Powell Loop in Gresham has made the initial cut for the coming reality TV show "Lawn Wars," which will feature "amazing, fun lawns across America and the people to take the time to make them," said Marie Malyszek, president of Dam Legacy Entertainment and casting director for the project.

But in order to be featured, a city needs to have more than one lawn to offer; it's expensive to locate a crew, and even reality TV is thinking economical, said Martin, who wants to spotlight her sustainability and alternative medicine projects.

Along with her labyrinth lawn and her partner Patrick McEachern's sacred healing gardens, Martin has found a port-themed lawn in Vancouver and a rare and exotic-planted lawn in Canby to offer producers. But to make the selection eclectic, she needs a redneck lawn in the Portland area. The deadline is the end of this week.

"If I can land a redneck lawn I can close this deal and cameras are coming here to see what I'm doing," Martin said. "I've been hunting reality TV for years. ... If I was Kim Kardashian, I could save the world."

Malyszek has seen redneck lawns that feature installations made of beer cans --
and the owner drinks each beer before adding the can. She's seen a lawn
with an antique pick-up in the middle whose owners, instead of moving
the truck, built a pond around it and turned the truck into a fountain.

Have a redneck lawn?

If you have a redneck lawn, Denise Martin -- and the reality TV show "Lawn Wars" -- wants to hear from you. Contact Martin at eating2heaven@gmail.com or 503 975-0856 by the end of the week.

Pre-production on the show will begin in a couple of months, Malyszek said; she couldn't say which network the show would air on.

"The lawns are dynamic and different and creative," Malyszek said. "We want the people who are watching at home to say, 'Wow, I wish I had the guts to do that,' and lawns that people say, 'Oh my God, if I did that my wife would divorce me for sure.'"

Like a sustainable Kardashian

View full sizeThis clip from Patrick McEachern's application video to the "Lawn Wars" reality TV show pictures a sacred healing garden and his philosophy.

Martin and McEachern want to generate publicity for their Eduen Project and a dome project -- building a greenhouse dome in their yard overlooking the Springwater Trail to grow the medicinal plants she says saved her life.

She met McEachern when, she said, he used plants in his sacred energy garden to reverse her early menopause and allow her to have a baby at age 47. She documented the experience in her book, "Eating My Way to Heaven."

"It was a wild, spiritual experience," she said. "Patrick was treating the soil the way God intended. ... I had a supernatural experience there."

The two also launched the Eduen Project -- "putting you in the middle of Eden," she said -- that seeks to create an ecological teaching village in Gresham. Ultimately they want to have a global reach in teaching how to create sustainable lives.

Martin and McEachern have built "alien-looking" lawns across Portland, Martin said, and now they hope their labyrinth lawn, sacred healing gardens and extroverted personalities make network executives' cut.

"It's not just to have myself on a reality show," she said. "This will be worth millions of dollars of advertising. ... You can't buy that kind of publicity."

They've at least made it through the hardest part, Malyszek said. "Of the hundreds of lawns I've seen, they made the cut. That's amazing. That's huge," she said. "It's 50-50 amazing lawn and the person. If the lawn is great and the person is boring, it won't work."